Battle was chaos in a way that became more ragged and desperate the longer it took.

Marco could see the small ramming craft darting about, slamming into the sides of enemy ships with crushing force. Even so, their game wasn't splitting apart entire hulls like the bigger ships. They poked holes in hulls to fill holds with water and drown their enemies over time.

He saw enemy frigates and allied ships locked together in desperate tangles, boarding planks crashing into place as crews met invaders with steel and spell at arm’s length.

The Foolish Endeavor threaded the edge of this storm, Marco weaving the wheel back and forth, keeping them alive by mere inch-long adjustments, sometimes. Every near miss made the crew that much more nervous. This had to be over soon, Marco thought, or they might start collapsing from the sheer tension.

Elisa’s fire-endowed bolts tore through another ship’s rigging, collapsing its sails. Riv roared encouragement to the borrowed strike team, who had enough ranged fighters among them to make a difference in eliminating enemy personnel. Aethe stood balanced at the bow, loosing arrows like a machine, distracting would-be defenders and pinning down enemy captains.

Marco saw coordination slowly take hold around them again. Smaller allied ships doubled and tripled up on single targets, rushing to overwhelm isolated enemies. Quill’s fleet answered with equal ferocity, but it simply didn't have the numbers to resist them anymore. Marco saw one of their ram-ships, heavy and cruelly built, smash straight through a brig. He forced himself not to flinch as men and women spilled into the sea, but then realized it wasn't one of their own ships. This was violence inflicted on an enemy by the enemy. More specifically, the ram-ship was the first to realize the game was truly over and to turn to escape.

The balance was tipped in their favor. And Marco knew it was about to tip even further. A cheer from almost every allied craft went up as the frigates finally destroyed the orb, scattering it to nothing before it ever had a chance to affect so much as a single mind. Then they turned, aimed, and unleashed hell.

One ship got away, the ramming ship that had sacrificed their own allies for a chance to escape. As Redd's messenger materialized on the deck, he asked it the obvious question.

"Should we chase them?" Marco said.

"No, I don't think so." Redd stroked his beard. "A waste of time. They won't be back. Besides, letting a few terrified enemies escape to let everyone know they got kicked around by a superior force carries its own benefits."

"Besides," Aethe broke in, pointing. "That's the island, right? I think we have bigger problems."

Quillton was only just visible even now, but it wasn't hard to spot. High above it, hovering like a dread god, was an orb of power ten times bigger than any they had seen before. It was menacing in every aspect of the word.

The retribution armada sailed inwards toward Quillton's dock, the retribution armada cutting through the waves like a steel-tipped spear. But as the minutes stretched, gaps began to appear in their formation. Marco frowned as he counted sail and found there were less than there had been minutes before. Members of the navy were dropping out.

Elisa stood at the railing beside Aethe. "Some of the ships are already turning back."

Aethe’s bow rested in her hand, though her arrows were finally at rest for a moment. She nodded grimly. "The talismans must be warning them. If they are being affected, it's better they flee than turn on us."

Elisa pressed her lips together, the sea breeze tugging at her hair.

"It makes sense. The further we go, the stronger his influence seems to be getting. You can feel it in the air. They haven’t been exposed the way we have. Their minds don’t know how to resist," Elisa finally explained.

Aethe tilted her head. "But we do?"

Elisa shrugged. "Maybe every orb we shattered and every plinth we broke was like inoculation. Think of it as a dose of poison small enough that we adapted to it instead of dying. Each time, our resistance grew. I don't know if that's for sure, but there are magics that work like that."

"Then we’re the tip of the spear. Whether we want to be or not."

"Yeah." Elisa sighed. “Consider us lucky.”

—

The strike team aboard The Foolish Endeavor wasn’t so lucky in that way. Even now, Marco could see the strain they were under. Most of them were sweating and trembling, their eyes flickering back and forth as if they were being crushed by some invisible pressure.

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Riv tried to shake one of them awake from a daze, gripping his shoulder hard. "Stay with me. You’re stronger than this."

Elisa moved between them, her hand hovering over a man’s chest and reinforcing him with her magic healing. He looked better and thanked her, but not so much better that it made any of the ship's primary crew feel much better.

"They’re feeling it worse than we are," she said. "Adding them to the crew only did so much. They’ll falter more and more as we draw close. We have to send them back."

Marco grimaced but didn’t argue. Deep down, he already knew it was necessary.

"Then we can’t count on them in the final push."

"No," Elisa said softly. "It’ll be us, at the heart of it. As it always has been."

They let the sailors off the hook, putting them in the magical outboat and letting them row to another ship on the verge of retreating.

—

When they finally scraped to a halt at Quillton’s docks, only a few small boats accompanied them. Black sand crunched under boots as Redd and Towe jumped to shore, weapons drawn. A few other captains accompanied them. None of them were looking great. The massive violet orb overhead pulsed and dyed everything around them with purple light as the assembled captains met on the beach.

They didn’t need to say much that Marco couldn't see in their eyes. Every one of them was almost tapped. Their superior stats were holding them to the task for now, but they couldn't go much further.

"I don't know how you do it." Redd was shaking, barely holding together. “It's horrible. It's like I'm seeing things out of the corner of my eyes. Terrible things. This is an island of nightmares.”

Towe grimaced in agreement, his hand trembling as it gripped his sword hilt. It was a new sword, or else just what he had been using before getting his hands on the Quill-infected one that had almost gotten him killed.

"We should be with you. Me especially," Towe said under the strain.

For a moment, silence pressed on them all. Marco tried to figure out a way to cut them loose without shaming them, but before he could, the island made that decision for them. Above the docks and just at the bend of the road, several of the island's residents appeared. They weren't folks Marco knew, which pleased him. He didn't want to kill friends, and every one of these people was clearly and totally insane at that moment.

Marco stepped forward, laying a hand on Redd’s arm before the enemy forces realized they were there. "You’ve done enough. You brought us here. We are geared up for this. You aren't. It's not your fault"

Redd’s jaw worked as he fought the words he wanted to say, then nodded slowly. His eyes panned up to the would-be attackers on the path.

"Wait till they attack. We can't go any further, but we can at least take care of this group for you. After that… good luck,” he said.

Elisa dipped her head, her eyes soft. "We’ll finish it."

The enemy group rushed then, so absent mentally they were almost frothing at the mouth. Marco peppered them with his gun until the group of four made it to Redd and his group, locking swords, axes, and guns together in a brutal melee.

"Go!" Redd said. "Now!"

Marco nodded and motioned his group forward. They skirted by the fight and left their friends against the unfamiliar residents. It was hard, but it was necessary.

And with that, Marco turned his gaze up the path to Quillton. With the orb blazing above them, he started walking and led his crew inland toward the heart of Quill’s power.

They weren't far before they saw the extent of the chaos. This deep in Quill's territory, there apparently wasn't much chance of resisting the pull of his powers. Those who seemed to be resisting the powers the best kept their minds, but were still sheathed in so many hallucinations and falsehoods that they were firing or slashing in terror at anything that got anywhere near them.

The people who were a touch more resistant than that, the few that Marco recognized as the very strongest, were lying on the ground trembling in terror, resisting with everything they had and with nothing left in reserve.

Everyone else was entirely out of their minds. Spells and gunfire flew back and forth as big melee fighters bashed heads, slammed opponents to the ground, and moved on.

Some of the people on this island would have been possible to fight, Marco saw. He and his team were pretty strong now. They had often done battle with people who were around the lowest level this area had to offer. The people those people were running away from were out of the question. Marco was seeing attacks that made his hair stand on end from a hundred paces. Any of them would put any member of his team down in a single hit.

"Come on," Aethe said. "This way."

"You are sure?"

Aethe nodded. "I'm sure. Trust me."

It was a testament to how reliable Aethe had always been that not a single member of the team questioned her. With the team close behind, Aethe led them down a side path past a series of buildings to a part of town Marco had seen but hadn’t bothered to remember. There, she led them between two houses, through a stand of trees that had survived Quillton’s rapid expansion, and down another path. With a shock, Marco realized which path it was.

"This goes to Chenchen's," Marco said. "That old woman's shop."

"It does."

"Is that in the right direction?"

"More or less," Aethe said. "But if anyone survived this and can help us, it's her."

"I hope so." Marco really did. She was his friend, to the extent they had friends at all anymore. "Any particular reason you think so?"

"You really don't know?" Aethe looked around at her friends, all of whom had blank looks on their faces. "Wow."

"Just spill it already," Elisa said. "You know we see less than you do and there's no time."

"She's the strongest person here," Aethe said. "On the entire island, by a long shot, unless there's someone so strong they can get around my skills entirely. Since that's not really how it works, if anyone is on their feet, it's her."

It was still a good few minutes walk to her shop. When they arrived, the shop was there, and Chenchen's goods were laid out on the wooden top of the stall's counter just as they had always been. Chenchen herself, however, was not visible.

"Great," Marco said. "Where did she go?"

"I don't know," Aethe said. "The insanity might have gotten her. Or she might have left the island completely. I see her footprints from today when she walked in, but none after she left, so she was hiding her movements when she left in any case. She could be anywhere."

"No, not anywhere." A weak voice came from down inside the stall, behind the counter. "I'm here."